Straight in the Eye
by FuneralCricket
Summary: A songfic, Keep Your Eyes Open by Taylor Swift. About Prim, as she helps her mother treat Gale after he's been whipped.


_**Everybody's waiting  
Everybody's watching  
Even when you're sleeping  
Keep your eyes open**_  
_It was the sensation that had been creeping on to me ever since Father died. But I'd ignored it, telling myself that even if Mother couldn't care for us anymore, Katniss would always protect me. And there would be Gale too. No matter what, somebody would always protect me._

_I should have just accepted it when I was seven. Seeing Katniss stumble inside, half her face swollen and Gale, his back shredded, lying on a board, brought me to my senses. Haymitch muttered to Mother, "New head." _

_He meant a new head Peacekeeper, but it struck me, what it meant. There was no waiting for Katniss or for Mother to take action, there was no more being the little one. I shook myself. Get a new head, Prim. I told myself. There's no more of that. _

_**The tricky thing  
Is yesterday we were just children  
Playing soldiers  
Just pretending  
Dreaming dreams with happy endings  
In backyards, winning battles with our wooden swords**__  
__It was only yesterday I'd had a snow fight with Gale's little brothers and sister. Rory, Vick, and Posy. We'd gone under the fence and into the Meadow, slipping on the snow, gasping and covering each other in snowballs. Then we'd come back in and had hot chocolate, a specialty because we were a victor's family. _

_But I knew that was over. No more snowball fights, no more lying in the daisies, no more. I helped Mother set up the brews, going over the herbs I'd memorized, bandaging Gale's back. I'd seen worse wounds, but this was different. Every lash, every cut in his skin seemed like a brutal flick of the whip, roughly coaxing me from my old world into the new. _

_**But now we've stepped into a cruel world  
Where everybody stands and keeps score**_**  
**_**Keep your eyes open**_**  
**_**Everybody's waiting for you to breakdown  
Everybody's watching to see the fallout  
Even when you're sleeping, sleeping  
Keep your eyes open**__  
_I'd tried to deny it when my name was drawn, but that hadn't helped. I told myself, There's no point in hiding from it. Face the truth. This is not a good world, the Hunger Games are a reality, the Capitol is cruel and there is no denying it. You can't break down. But you can't hide either. Be strong. Fight back. Keep your eyes open.

_**So here you are, two steps ahead and staying on guard  
Every lesson forms a new scar  
They never thought you'd make it this far  
But turn around (turn around), oh they've surrounded you  
**__**It's a showdown (showdown) and nobody  
comes to save you now**__  
I wanted so desperately to empty all the painkillers into the brew and give it to Gale, but I knew that wouldn't help. And not just because we needed to let the wound heal overnight first. Because if we did, we'd prove that we were weaklings. That any suffering will drive us back to our caves. And we're not backing down._

_Katniss badgered Mother to give him the medicine, but she refused. I watched, aghast, as she screamed every insult she knew and Haymitch and Peeta dragged her out of the room. That wasn't the older sister I knew. She'd broken down, given in to the pain. I didn't blame her. I'd hidden for so long that she'd started to crack. I knew I couldn't leave the burden entirely on her. I had to help._

_I shook my head and finished treating Gale's back. Then the doorbell rang._

_I jumped, nearly upsetting the brew. Was it Peacekeepers, coming to arrest us? I wanted to run. Slip out the back door and run right back to my old house in the Seam. _

_But I couldn't do that. I wasn't the little duck anymore. The youngest duck I would be. _

_I steeled myself as Mother opened the door. One figure stood on the porch. Was it a single Peacekeeper, sent to shoot us all? Whoever it was, I wouldn't back down. I would look them straight in the eye. _

_**But you've got something they don't  
You've just gotta keep your eyes open**__**  
**__**Everybody's waiting for you to breakdown  
Everybody's watching to see the fallout  
Even when you're sleeping, sleeping**__**  
**__**Keep your eyes open**__  
_It wasn't a Peacekeeper. It was one of Katniss's friends. The mayor's daughter. Madge.

She held out a box to her. "Use these for your friend. They're my mother's. She said I could take them. Use them, please."

Then she hurried back, into the flurry of snow. We took the box to the kitchen. Inside was some sort of liquid we injected into Gale. "What is that stuff?" asked Peeta.

"It's from the Capitol. It's called morphling," said Mother.

Some sort of high-tech painkiller then. So we did have a visitor from the Capitol, though not Peacekeepers. _See what happened? _I told myself. _You didn't back down, and something good happened._

Of course, I wouldn't always be as lucky. To say the odds had not been in our favor lately was an understatement. But whoever came next, I wouldn't back down. I wouldn't even blink. I would stand tall and look right back at them.

Straight in the eye.


End file.
